Onipa'a: Celebrating a Queen's birthday

This past Sunday was quite the eventful day.

First, we went to church. We're really enjoying the Lanakila Ward. Talk about "aloha," these folks have welcomed us warmly. Sorry, no pics.

Then, we left church a little bit early to participate in the Onipa'a celebration at Iolani Palace. Some well-placed Facebook messages got us the chance to sing with the choir, directed by Aunty Nola Nahulu. First time for Isaac to sing Hawaiian choral music, and to get to do so with Aunty Nola? Pretty cool. No, I cannot use the "mouth the words" technique in this choir like I did in MoTab. Fortunately, unfortunately, I'll let others be the judge of that.

We got to be a part of the celebration of Queen Liliuokalani's birthday. BTW, in case anyone was wondering, our Lydia was named with the queen in mind, since her given Christian name was Lydia. Bit of Chock family trivia for you...



Then Isaac opened his mission call. I'll post that in a separate post.

Finally, we ended the day with dinner at the Ishikawas' house. They are like my second (third? fourth?) mom and dad here in Hawaii. As usual, they had quite the spread.

Unfortunately, I was too busy eating and talking story to bother taking pictures of the food. Although I'm sure you can imagine, it was great. Love the Ishikawas. They're going to visit Charlie, one of my best friends from high school, for the next month and a half. Charlie lives in Boston with his family.

Busy Sunday!

Getting windy up here...what do the kids do?

So, there's a couple hurricanes in the neighborhood this week. The kids don't really have any experience with anything like this, except maybe that microburst from Utah Lake a few years back?

Anyhow, the wind up here at Alewa Heights is getting pretty gusty. The poor old plumeria tree in the yard lost a big branch today, and last night one of the coconut tree branches came down.

Well, since we got some of our stuff from our shipping container earlier this week (we got a storage unit in Kapolei for most of the stuff, we just grabbed the important stuff: the harp, the cello, the ukuleles, stuff like that...), we had some of our blankets.

And what do the Chock kids do when the wind is blowing outside?

 

They just make me feel brave.

Yellow gloves. They give you magical powers to clean stuff like this

ewwww

And this

And…

Garbage created:

Proof that once upon a time, someone lived here who actually cleaned.

It may have been long ago…

Toilet covers anyone?

AFTER!

Thomas and I worked together for 2 hours and then I spent another couple hours finishing up. Also did the linen closet.

And filled some more bags - this time donate. Lotsa mustard and avacado.

One cockroach. Dying. Muahahaha ha. I took a short video of it wiggling its legs but don't know how to put that on the blog. :)

I'm hoping the shower (broken water heater) will feel less cold now. Oh wait, no, I actually just decided I love cold showers. So refreshing. ;)

A Visit From the Bishop

Not that it was required for me to feel finally welcome here in Hawaii, I've felt more than welcome already. But there really is something special about having a fellow priesthood holder come visit me and my family in my new...digs. Still adjusting to calling it home at this point. All part of the process.

And when that fellow priesthood holder is our bishop, even better.

Rebecca and I commented on how we could feel a change, a calm, warm spirit, enter our home when he came in. We hadn't finished cleaning up the mess from dinner yet and we were wrangling kids to help clean up when he showed up. He even offered to help us clean up! 

And when we finally were able to sit down together with him, we were able to "talk story" and get to know each other. Such a great story he shared, starting in Tonga, then to New Zealand, finally to Hawaii. Uplifting and humbling story. And he shared it all with a self-deprecating laugh and smile. 

He joined us for a kneeling prayer before he left and he got the Lydia hug treatment. Even though things seem kind of daunting for us here, I know that my local priesthood leader, my bishop, is ready and willing to help us. Not because it's his duty, but because he genuinely wants to.

I feel humbled and grateful to be in the Lanakila Ward. 

My Hawaii is different from their Hawaii

What an active Saturday!

We woke up  without much planned. We decided to head over to Diamond Head, or Leahi, to hike up to the top of the crater.

Now , I remember doing this when I was younger, we did it for fun. Couple few things changed: first, the fee to get in. There's a part of me that totally gets it and thinks it's a great idea to charge people at least a $1 apiece to go on the hike. There's also a part of me that has a hard time with the whole change thing. There's a concrete path for heaven's sake! Sheesh. And at the top there's that loop, you don't have to go back down through the 100 steps (Lydia counted 99, I told her to round up to 100). It's very nice, yes, but I guess some of the fun of the thing for me growing up was the feel that this wasn't really a manicured kind of hike. Oh well. I wanted to point out where my good friend Sam and I vandalized a wall but I had to be a good example to James and Lydia. I think the kids had fun, I think Lydia did great she only did a piggyback on the way down way at the bottom. Not bad for a 4 y/o.

"Lydia, look at the camera!"

"No I don't want to, I'm tired."

"Lydia, just close your eyes and imagine Icee!"

"Dad, I won't go over the edge, I promise." You can't see it but James is (gasp!) outside the fence and off the trail! He is inches away from the edge WITHOUT THE FENCE!

After that, since we were near my old stomping grounds we went into Kaimuki town and stopped at the Crack Seed store. First time I went in there with Rebecca and all 5 kids. Was fun to see the looks on their faces when they saw and smelled all the jars full of yumminess.

And of course we got Icee. With a Li Hing Mui. Yum.

Then, after that we visited Punchbowl Crater, National Cemetery of the Pacific. We paid our respects to Grandpa Chock whose urn is there.

We headed home, pretty exhausted but hoping we could hang our with our friends the Haverly family. See, they're pretty cool and they have kids around the same age as us. We hope to not overstay our welcome with them, but love to hang out with them because they're so cool.  Well, they offered to bring extra surfboards to teach the kids how to surf. Awesome!

And then my cousin Ginai wanted to hang out too. More awesome! Then my cousin and one of my favorite families in the world could meet. So we went to Chun's and the kids all had a shot at surfing. Even Lydia got the chance to stand up on a surfboard in the water. It was in the shallow water and folks were helping her. But still.

I got to learn to holoholo. I was told you shouldn't say "fishing" because then you don't catch any. It's not fishing, it's "holoholo."

Such a fun day. I'm so, so proud of my kids for trying something new. I've already told them multiple times that my goal is for them to be better at "Hawaiian things" than me. That includes surfing.

Isaac and James about to enter the water with their guide, Kala.

Maile and Angela venturing into the water with their guides Pili and my cousin Ginai.

Honolulu Zoo

We got an annual family zoo pass just for donating $10 and opening an account at Aloha Pacific FCU. Sweet! We picked Angela and James up from school and went straight there. It was pretty toasty and it was a lot of walking and looking at sleeping animals so we felt like we were melting when we finished. Then we went to the Japanese food court at Ala Moana and watched Eric's son, Nicolas, perform with his band. We haven't been leaving enough time for the kids to just be home and getting homework done…oops :)

Potty trained orangutans?

Keeping Lydia entertained

One of the interesting challenges we've faced in the short time we've been in Hawaii is keeping Lydia entertained without using what we call "screen time," which is basically anything on a screen (Netflix, games on the iPad, etc.).

See, if you didn't know, Lydia is a social butterfly. She wants to be friends with everyone. Rebecca calls it "adopting grandmas and grandpas." Our neighbors just down the hill from us would be perfect candidates for Lydia's "adopt a grandpa" program. Except, when Rebecca went down there to knock and meet the neighbors (they're very nice people, excellent neighbors), and Rebecca explained Lydia's desire to get to know them. "Do you have any grandkids that Lydia could play with sometime?" she asked.  "Oh no, we never had children. We made a choice to not have children, we believe in zero population."

Ahem.

So, we just brought 4 rowdy kids with us next door to you. Sorry if the noise bothers you, neighbors!

They do have dogs though. And they're labradoodles, similar to our Xyla, a goldendoodle. So the kids enjoy getting a little puppy therapy from the neighbors who are zero population folks.

So, Rebecca grabbed some toys and games from the clearance rack at Wal-Mart yesterday. That means that daddy gets to play goofy games like Fibber with Lydia.